XXII
LOVE AND CERTAINTY
The weeks that followed were a time for Howard of very singular
happiness--happiness of a quality of which he had not thought
himself capable, and in the very existence of which he was often
hardly able to believe. He had never known what intimate affection
was before; and it was strange to him, when he had always been able
to advance so swiftly in his relations with others to a point of
frankness and even brotherliness, to discover that there was a
whole world of emotion beyond that. He was really deeply reserved
and reticent; but he admitted even comparative strangers so easily
and courteously to his house of life, that few suspected the
existence of a secret chamber of thought, with an entrance
contrived behind the pictured arras, which was the real fortress of
his inner existence, and where he sate oftenest to contemplate the
world. That chamber of thought was a place of few beliefs and fewer
certainties; if he adopted, as he was accustomed to do,
conventional language and conventional ideas, it was only to feel
himself in touch with his fellows; for Howard's mind was really a
place of suspense and doubt; his scepticism went down to the very
roots of life; his imagination was rich and varied, but he did not
trust his hopes or even his fears; all that he was certain of was
just the actual passage of his thought and his emotion; he formed
no views about the future, and he abandoned the past as one might
abandon the debris of the mine.
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